Sheryl Kiselbach, a former sex trade worker in Vancouver who launched a Charter challenge against Canada's prostitution laws, reacts to news the SCOC struck down the country's laws. She said she was overwhelmed that sex trade workers will now have better access to health and safety.

Photograph by: Tiffany Crawford
, Vancouver Sun

Vancouver's Pivot Legal Society, an intervener in the case to reform the country's anti-prostitution laws, celebrated a "landmark victory" following the Supreme Court of Canada decision announced Friday.

The court, in a unanimous 9-0 ruling, struck down three criminal code provisions — against keeping a brothel, living on the avails of prostitution, and street soliciting — which Pivot had argued violated sex workers' rights to improve their safety and health.

Since 2007, sex workers from the Downtown Eastside have been involved in their own Charter challenge to Canada's prostitution laws. The case was launched by Sheryl Kiselbach, a former sex worker for 30 years, who on Friday said she was overwhelmed by the court's decision.

"I'm elated, kind of in shock," she said at an early morning news conference in the Downtown Eastside, the city's poorest area where dozens of women, mostly prostitutes, have been murdered or gone missing.

"I feared this decision wouldn't happen in my time and nothing would ever change. It is a great day. Women will be safer because they will be able to report the violence without fear of consequence. That's huge."

She said she hopes the decision sends a strong message to sexual predators, like convicted serial killer Robert Pickton, that sex trade workers are human beings with rights and protections under the law.

"This population is no longer marginalized. No longer isolated. They are part of our society, and they have every right as other Canadian citizens," she said. "Maybe before, these predators thought 'Nobody cares about these people.' Well, they do. That has all changed."

The court decision gives Parliament a year-long reprieve to respond with new legislation, but Kiselbach said she wasn't concerned about that part of the decision.

"I think it will mean that women can go out without being afraid, without jumping in a car without thinking or looking because they want the date, but they don't want to get caught."

Pivot lawyer Katrina Pacey said she could not be more thrilled with the outcome.

"These criminal laws have prevented health and safety for sex workers for too long, and with devastating consequences," she said.

But not everyone was celebrating on Friday. Hilla Kermer, a spokeswoman for Vancouver Rape Relief, said she had mixed feelings about the decision.

"We are relieved that women in prostitution will not be criminalized, but we are very worried about having no legislation that will prevent men from buying and profiting from women's bodies," she said. "We're disappointed that the Supreme Court did not differentiate between women in prostitution and the men who are profiting from it."

The Asian Women's Coalition, which also testified during the Supreme Court court case, echoed Kermer's concerns. Spokeswoman Suzanne Jay said that while they argued for the decriminalization of prostitution, they had also called for criminal sanctions against men who buy or sell women. She said Ottawa needs to find a way to deal with the men who are the source of violence and harm to women, such as those engaged in human trafficking.

Elin Sigurdson, a Vancouver lawyer who worked for more than a decade as a volunteer on Pivot's sex workers' rights campaign, dismissed the idea that the laws could protect people engaged in human trafficking for prostitution.

"In a decriminalized situation, there is a possibility of more transparency so that people who are engaged in a legitimate sex trade are able to ensure that they are not part of a trafficking industry, and are able to advise and alert authorities when trafficking is occurring," she said. "Everyone agrees that exploitation and coercion should not happen, and there is room for everyone to work together."

The ruling is a victory for sex workers seeking safer working conditions because it found that the laws violated the Charter guarantee to life, liberty and security of the person.

"I just hope that everything works out for the best, and I am thankful our voices are finally being heard," said DJ Joe, a sex trade worker for 35 years and board member of the Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence.

That organization was also an intervener in the Supreme Court case, and Joe is a plaintiff in a challenge to the criminal laws that relate to adult prostitution before the B.C. Supreme Court.

Ontario's Appeal Court previously struck down the ban on brothels on the grounds it exposed women to more danger. Friday's landmark ruling comes 34 years after the Supreme Court last upheld the country's anti-prostitution laws.

Sheryl Kiselbach, a former sex trade worker in Vancouver who launched a Charter challenge against Canada's prostitution laws, reacts to news the SCOC struck down the country's laws. She said she was overwhelmed that sex trade workers will now have better access to health and safety.

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